A review by ericfheiman
The Best American Comics 2008 by Lynda Barry, Jessica Abel, Matt Madden

5.0

After a rather disappointing 2007 edition with remote and myopic selections by Chris Ware, Lynda Barry brings this series back into high quality territory. While not all of her selections are home runs, there are a few so out-of-the-park great that they easily make up for the lesser entries. These selections also highlight the subtle difference between the intensely personal work of both Ware and Barry. Both mine the melancholy of everyday life, but Barry's work is messier, more human and hopeful, Ware's, though flush with controlled virtuosity of form, narrative, and emotion, is instead hermetically sealed, completely devoid of hope. Miraculously, Ware makes it work—-possibly due to the friction between such refined beauty and overt loneliness——but very few others can and that was problem with his 2007 selections: too many pale Ware imitations. Barry is cannier in her choices, rather than looking for imitators, she instead unearths a variety of artists joined only by their emotional honesty and inventive use of narrative.